Salute the Dark

He had sent to Sarn, to his man Sfayot there: Give me all the horses they can spare, all the riding beetles, every beast broken for riding and not too weary to gallop. He had been obliged to send twice, because the Sarnesh had not taken him seriously the first time. Then the animals had started to arrive, trains of five, ten – twenty even. Two-thirds were horses, which he preferred for riding, being better for stamina and speed than most insects. Beyond that, they had been gifted as motley a nest of creatures as he had ever seen: a racing beetle long past its prime; a dozen plodding draught animals with high, rounded shells; a brace of nimble coach-horse beetles, fiery of temperament, their tails arching like scorpion stings. There were even a couple of exotic creatures that might have come from a menagerie: a black-and-white-striped riding spider that had the alarming tendency to jump ten feet when it became unsettled, and a low-slung, scuttling cricket that could give a horse a decent race over any short distance.The animals’ overall quality was variable, their temperament uncertain, since cavalry had little place in the Lowlander or imperial view of war. A combination of airborne troops, accurate crossbows and the Ant-kinden’s reluctance to rely on any minds not linked to their own had seen no development here of the noble art of horsemanship. Riding, after all, was for scouts and messengers, not real soldiers, so when Salma had told them what he planned, they had looked at him as though he were mad.

Except, that is, for men like Phalmes, who had served in the Twelve-Year War against Salma’s own people. They had seen how the Commonwealers fought.

Of course, the Commonwealers had better mounts, and longer to train. Still, the circling mounted rabble that Salma was now watching was at least managing to remain in the saddle. Phalmes, in the lead, kicked his mount on to a gallop, and most of the rest followed, the horses changing pace from a canter with rather more will than he had witnessed before, the insects scuttling after them, their legs speeding into a frantic blur.

Phalmes spotted him and slowed his mount, letting the column of riders behind disintegrate into a rabble. The Mynan rode over, looking as though he had been playing teacher to them far longer than he was happy with.

‘How goes your cavalry?’ Salma asked him.

Phalmes spat. ‘Three more broken legs since you went off,’ he said. ‘Still, the Sarnesh finally made good on those new saddles you designed for them, and riders are staying on more often than not, now we’ve got them. I haven’t yet explained why we need them, because I didn’t think they’d like it.’

Of course the Commonwealers had better saddles, too, and Salma had sketched his recollection of them, and sent the resulting drawing to Sarn for their leatherworkers to puzzle over. It seemed that something had actually come of that, although he had not been hopeful. The high front and rear were not to keep the rider seated so much as to prevent a charging lancer from being flung from the saddle on impact.

But Phalmes was right: it was not the time to explain about that.

‘Are they ready, then?’ he asked.

‘Not by a long ways,’ Phalmes told him. ‘Keep training them, they’ll get there eventually, but if you’ve got something happening soon, we can’t rely on them.’

Salma bared his teeth, but nodded. ‘I trust your judgment,’ he said, ‘but we need to make a stand sooner rather than later. Malkan’s reinforcements are with him already: the Sixth is joining the Seventh, and that means they’ll stop dragging their feet and start marching properly at last. If we’re to make good our promises to Sarn, then the time is upon us.’

* * *

General Malkan had ordered an automotive driven out to oversee the arrival himself, standing on its roof with some guards and his intelligence officer, eyes narrowed as he watched 15,000 soldiers marching towards his temporary camp.

‘Tell me about the Sixth, then,’ he directed, having observed they were in good order. Despite the long march, the troops on the ground were keeping ranks, forming columns between the snub-nosed wood and metal of the war automotives embellished with their turret-mounted artillery, and amid the huge plated transporters that plodded along patiently like enormous beetles. The scouts that had flown ahead and those on the flanks of the army were pulling in now as they neared the Seventh’s fortifications, filtering down to land ahead of the column in order to make their reports.

‘Well,’ the intelligence officer said, ‘you must have heard that the Sixth took the brunt of several engagements against the Commonwealers in the Twelve-Year War.’

‘Battle of Masaki, wasn’t it?’ Malkan asked.